In recent years, it is common for mobile phone manufacturers to develop semiconductors by themselves. Making chips can be said to be a key point for mobile phone manufacturers to build a moat and go up. Just like apple, Samsung and Google, these mobile phone chip manufacturers have all started their own research early. In fact, semiconductors are also the focus of domestic mobile phone manufacturers. Huawei, Xiaomi, oppo and Wentai are all entering the semiconductor field through investment or self-research, especially investment. The pace of investment this year is accelerating.
Huawei millet investment and self research
Huawei's chip history can be said to be the earliest layout among mobile phone manufacturers. Huawei had its first ASIC chip as early as 1991; In 1993, he had the first chip designed by himself using EDA; By the time Hisilicon was born in 2004, the Kirin 910 was released in 2013, Huawei's first 4-core LTE SOC, and Kirin officially appeared. Since then, Kirin chip has matured step by step. By 2020, Kirin 9000, the world's first 5nm 5g SOC, will become the pinnacle of Kirin. Not only mobile phone chips, but now Huawei has blossomed in many fields, such as mobile phone chips, servers, the Internet of things, routers, TWS headphones and so on. It has to be said that Huawei has found its own way.
In the field of routers, Huawei has also reached its peak. Since 1995, Huawei's data communication product line began to develop routers. After more than 20 years of development, Huawei has continued to innovate and surpass itself in the field of routers. According to IHS Markit, an international authoritative research organization, Huawei's market share in the field of operators peaked for the first time in 2018. According to the global router market share report in the first half of 2019, Huawei's router products also ranked first in the market share in the field of operators.
In the field of intelligent computing, not only server chips, Huawei provides five self-developed chips to support the world of interconnection and perception of all things. It includes Kunpeng processor based on ARM processor chip, shengteng processor based on Da Vinci architecture developed by Huawei, intelligent management chip hi710, intelligent SSD control chip hi1812 and intelligent fusion network chip hi1822.
Previously, according to the social media account "Chang'an digital Jun", Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business, issued the notice on the establishment of display driver products in the terminal chip business department to establish the display driver products business department. In this regard, Huawei said that it did set up this department. It is learned from the industrial chain that Huawei has been engaged in relevant projects as early as the end of 2019. At present, the first OLED driver of Huawei hisilic is already on stream.
Xiaomi is most famous for its mobile phone chip "surging". Xiaomi embarked on the journey of the chip in 2014, but there has been no follow-up action in the past two years. After the frustration of surging chips, Xiaomi began to make multiple bets, investing and self-research at the same time.
When it comes to investment, the investment wheels of Huawei and Xiaomi are moving fast, but we have also summarized in many ways before, and both of them have a common interest
Security chip, RF chip, analog chip, power semiconductor device, memory chip and 3D optical chip
And other chip opportunities, jointly invested in the CIS image sensor enterprise sitway, RF chip manufacturers angruiwei and Wuxi Haoda, and 3D optical chip Zonghui core light.
In addition to investment, Xiaomi also took a fancy to aiot, a trillion track. The rapid development of artificial intelligence in recent years has made aiot one of the hottest fields at present. In April 2019, the pinecone electronics team, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Xiaomi, spun off to form a new company, Nanjing Dayu semiconductor. Nanjing Dayu semiconductor will focus on the technical research and development of AI and IOT chips and solutions in the semiconductor field, while pinecone will continue to focus on the research and development of mobile phone SOC chips and AI chips.
At the 2019 world semiconductor conference, big fish semiconductor and pingtouge launched the world's first NB IOT dual-mode chip big fish U1 with built-in GPS / BeiDou for the field of Internet of things. After the split, Xiaomi gave a controlling position to the big fish semiconductor team and encouraged independent financing, which is Xiaomi's latest exploration in the field of R & D technology investment to continue to move towards the deep water area. This is intended to enable it to develop faster and better and accelerate the R & D of aiot chips.
OV's core making plan
OV (oppo and vivo) belong to the step-by-step high system, which is equivalent to the second camp of mobile phones. The source of oppo core making should start from the end of 2017. Oppo registered and established "Shanghai Jinsheng Communication Technology Co., Ltd." in Shanghai, of which 100% of the equity is held by oppo.
However, it is not yet clear what kind of chip oppo wants to build. However, the coprocessor is well known. In November 2019, they applied for a trademark of oppo M1, and oppo responded that M1 will be one of their coprocessors. However, according to previous reports of Xinren,
In oppo's chip plan, ISP, AI chip and AP are their established goals.
AP should be the ultimate goal of oppo. Apple has achieved its strong performance with its self-developed AP and Qualcomm modem.
On July 30 this year, according to the enterprise investigation, the name of the wholly-owned subsidiary of oppo Guangdong Mobile Communication Co., Ltd. changed from Shoupu Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. to zheku Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd; Meanwhile, the registered capital of the company increased from 50 million yuan to 100 million yuan, an increase of 100%. Zheku technology is also a part of oppo core making plan. The company was established in 2019 and its legal representative is Liu Jun. The business scope includes: technology development, technology transfer, technical consultation and technical services in the fields of electronic technology, network technology and information technology, and the design of electronic products, communication products and semiconductors.
In addition to setting up its own company, oppo is also accelerating the pace of investment, which is quite the meaning of Huawei Xiaomi. On December 30 this year, oppo invested in Hanwei microelectronics, a UWB chip design company. Moreover, oppo is the leading investor. Its leading investment not only stimulates the development of Hanwei microelectronics, but also shows oppo's planning for the future. UWB chips are very consistent with the intelligent fields involved in oppo. Many people speculate that relevant chip products are on the way.
Founded in 2019, Hanwei focuses on the design and development of UWB chips and solutions. At present, Hanwei focuses on providing the market with high-performance, high-precision and high integration UWB chips that can support button battery power supply for diversified and rich application scenarios, including mobile phones, wearable devices, smart IOT terminals, industry-specific terminals, etc. The company expects the first chip to be mass produced in 2021.
Coincidentally, just recently, according to tianyancha information, there was an industrial and commercial change in Guangdong Weirong Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Weirong Technology), the new shareholder oppo Guangdong Mobile Communication Co., Ltd. and the registered capital was changed from RMB 100 million to RMB 111 million. According to public data, micro capacitor electronics is located in Luoding City, Yunfu City, Guangdong Province. It is a high-end multi-layer ceramic chip capacitor (MLCC) manufacturing enterprise built based on the national environmental protection industrial park.
Unlike oppo, vivo, which is a step-by-step system, has taken the path of cooperative R & D. Relying on the strong technical reserves of the partner Samsung, the first mobile phone SOC chip participated by vivo - the customized version of exynos 980 of vivo was released in November 19 and has been carried on the vivo x30 Pro mobile phone.
On September 23, 2019, Hu Baishan, vice president of vivo, responded to the rumors of chip R & D for the first time in an interview at the new headquarters base in Dongguan. He said that vivo really began to think about and deeply participate in the design of mobile phone SOC chip as early as a year and a half ago. He also directly explained the strategic layout of vivo in the chip field. He said that vivo will not set up a chip design or manufacturing team in the short term, but vivo will set up a 300-500 person team to cooperate with upstream chip manufacturers to pre define mobile phone SOC chips.
On the afternoon of November 12, 2020, Samsung released a new generation of flagship processor exynos1080 in Shanghai. Like Kirin 9000 and A14, it belongs to the first batch of 5nm supporting process chips, and announced that it will continue to maintain close contact and cooperation with strategic partners vivo. It is reported that this exynos1080 is also jointly developed by Samsung Semiconductor and vivo. So vivo will start with exynos 1080.
Wentai technology power semiconductor
As we all know, Wentai technology is well-known in the industry as a mobile phone ODM (original design manufacturer) and is the first tier supplier of domestic ODM. In 2017, it ranked first in mobile phone ODM shipments, with a market share of 19.95%, and has obvious advantages in the industry. However, in recent years, through the acquisition of Anse semiconductor, Wentai has successfully entered the upstream of semiconductors. Anse semiconductor is the third largest power semiconductor manufacturer in the world, and has also been deeply cultivated in the field of vehicle specification power semiconductors and third-generation semiconductors for a long time.
On August 19 this year, the project of China's first 12 inch vehicle scale power semiconductor automatic wafer manufacturing center invested by Wentai technology was officially signed with Lingang New Area and Lingang group. It is understood that the project plans to build a 12 inch vehicle gauge wafer factory with chip design, wafer manufacturing and packaging testing capabilities. Zhang Xuezheng, chairman of Wentai technology, introduced that in the field of semiconductor discrete devices, 12 inches is the highest technical level in the world, and the vehicle specification level represents the highest quality standard. The total investment of the project is 12 billion yuan, and the annual production capacity is expected to reach 360000 pieces.
On December 31, 2020, Wentai technology led the investment in the round B financing of basic semiconductors. Through the investment in basic semiconductors, they also successfully got the ticket of SiC, the popular product of automotive power devices. This can be said to be a stronger layout of Wentai technology in power semiconductors.
Basic semiconductor has mastered the international leading silicon carbide core technology, developed the whole industrial chain covering silicon carbide power devices such as material preparation, chip design, manufacturing process, packaging test and driving application, and successively launched full current and voltage grade silicon carbide Schottky diodes, 1200V silicon carbide MOSFETs that have passed industrial level reliability test The performance of vehicle specification grade silicon carbide power module and other series products has reached the international advanced level, and are applied to new energy, electric vehicles, smart grid, rail transit, industrial control, national defense and military industry.
It can be seen that in addition to mobile phones, Wentai technology is also looking for new development space. Betting on automotive semiconductors is one. On January 4, the 12 inch vehicle gauge semiconductor wafer manufacturing center project was officially started in Shanghai Lingang New Area. At present, the shortage of auto chips may even lead to the shutdown of auto enterprises. The most important reason behind it is the lack of production capacity. Therefore, expanding production capacity has become the common demand of the whole industrial chain. Wentai technology's project is aimed at the manufacturing of vehicle specification semiconductor wafers, which is bound to strengthen its production capacity and manufacturing capacity, so as to help the development of the industry.
epilogue
In the current environment, investment and self-research must be grasped with both hands and hard. Moreover, we should create differentiation in our own products and walk out of a road suitable for ourselves. Countless blood and tears have taught us that if we want to be free from others, only independent research and development is the only way out. Only in this way can we master the right to speak. It is the general trend and the only way for mobile phone manufacturers to move upstream. In the future, more semiconductor companies will emerge in China to contribute to the rise of domestic chips.
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